


I'll Be Your Safety

by Paraxdisepink



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Caretaking, Domestic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 21:46:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1703681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paraxdisepink/pseuds/Paraxdisepink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's getting headaches from what HYDRA did to him. And there's feelings. And some fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be Your Safety

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caughtinanocean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caughtinanocean/gifts).



> Birthday fic for caughtinanocean. This was supposed to hurt/comfort, but sort of turned into something else.

Steve wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of Bucky crashing around in the bathroom. The toilet seat slams open and through his open bedroom door Steve hears Bucky groaning in pain from down the hall.

That's all it takes for him to be out of bed and fully alert. He hasn't been a heavy sleeper since before the war. Definitely not since convincing Bucky to come home in his determination to be there every step of the way, no matter what time it is. 

Steve knows part of it's about guilt, but with the kind of second chance he's getting who can blame him for wanting to do everything right this time around? 

The toilet flushes and he finds Bucky folded up on the bathroom floor in the dark with his arms around his legs and his forehead on his knees. His face shines with sweat in the under cabinet light from the kitchen and he looks lost and absolutely miserable.

"Bad dream?" Steve hovers in the doorway. The nightmares have been getting worse over the past couple of months the more Bucky's memories creep back. It's not always easy to stay encouraging when getting better, becoming human again, really feeling, means watching him suffer. 

Bucky doesn't look up, just shifts so he can press his forehead into his cold metal arm. "No..." It's slurred. He has to suck in a breath to get the rest out. "S'my head. _It fucking hurts._ " 

Steve lowers his hand halfway to flicking the light on. This is new, and alarming. Steve has been so focused on getting Bucky to understand something so basic as having a loved one who cares about him and what that means that he hasn't bothered to think about what kind of real damage HYDRA's electroshock _therapy_ might have done. All Steve can think about is where he's going to take Bucky if he needs a doctor. It's not like he can waltz a genetically enhanced ex-HYDRA assassin seen in the middle of DC into a hospital emergency room.

Bucky sucks in another breath and Steve drops down beside him. "You wanna sit on the couch and try to put some ice on it? Your arm's not gonna stay cold for long like that. You're gonna warm up the metal."

Bucky lifts his face from his knees and pushes his hair out of his eyes. Steve takes that for a yes. Bucky's been pretty cooperative from early on once he made his mind up to accept Steve's help. Steve didn't think it was so much out of remembering in the beginning, but a grudging trust that came from the two of them being alike—Steve had been in the ice, he came from another time, HYDRA was his enemy, and his body did things that made people fear him and want to use him. Bucky still doesn't seem to want to be touched much though, but he braces his metal arm around Steve's back now and lets Steve bear most of his weight getting him to his feet. He doesn't pull away then either, leaning heavy against Steve's side where he must be too dizzy to walk on his own.

His breathing is shallow and labored and Steve knows it's bad. He tightens his arm around him as he guides Bucky into the living him. "If it doesn't get better we'll get you some help, Buck. No one's gonna let you suffer." Maybe Bruce could do something, run some tests. Maybe Thor would let Steve bring him to Asgard for some kind of healing.

He helps Bucky sit down and throws some ice in a plastic bag to lay on his forehead. Bucky groans in relief the instant the cold hits, laying his head back while Steve goes back to hovering. He hates feeling helpless, but he remembers something.

"Back in Brooklyn we used to have a neighbor who got bad headaches from time to time. Mom used to swear by coffee. I don't wanna turn the light on to make you some, so how about a coke?"

It's 2am, but caffeine doesn't do much to keep either of them up for long. Bucky just groans and Steve grabs a can from the fridge, handing it to him and sitting next to him on the couch. 

Bucky sips and sets it down on the coffee table. "My whole fucking arm is tingling." He sounds so defeated and depressed.

"The real one?" The last thing they need is for the bionic one to start malfunctioning. Steve's not exactly sure what they would do about that. Go to Stark maybe, except Natasha though the arm was beyond even him and Steve doesn't want Tony turning Bucky into his new toy. If he'd even help him. The Winter Soldier had killed his parents.

Bucky nods, and that's a small relief. Steve pulls out his phone to look for more suggestions that don't involve medication. Heating up one of those bean bag compresses to wrap around Bucky's neck gives him something to do for a few minutes. God knows he has enough things for sore muscles lying around the house. 

Bucky's still sweaty with pain when Steve brings it to him and the heat isn't going to help.

"Why don't you take your shirt off? Might make you less clammy." Steve has noticed that Bucky is always fully-clothed, even when he comes out of the bathroom after a shower. He wasn't that way before, in front of Steve or any of the guys during the war, but Steve's chalked it up to a dislike of feeling vulnerable and exposed.

For a minute Bucky doesn't answer. He adjusts the heat on his neck and the cold on his forehead and closes his eyes. But then he says in that same depressed and defeated voice, "There's a lot of scarring. I don't feel like looking at it while I'm sitting next to Mr. Perfect."

It's just a statement, not a dig at Steve, but it stings. 

"Yeah well how do you think I felt getting naked in front of Mr. Handsome Captain of the Football Team all the time?"

He shouldn't have said that. It only makes him think of how Bucky used to touch his scrawny and inadequate body, gentle and careful in what Steve had taken for pity at the time. Light kisses on his skinny shoulders, warm palms sliding under his shirt as Bucky slipped into the bed with him the second Steve's mom went out on an errand, nevermind that Steve was stuck there yet again with something catching. 

Bucky was real good at putting it on. 

_I just came to bring Steve the schoolwork he missed, Mrs. Rogers._

_Sure, Mrs. Rogers. I'll watch over him while you're gone. Take your time. I'll get him anything he needs._

"That was different," Bucky says tiredly. "You were small, Steve, not disfigured."

"Well I'll tell you what, being 'Mr. Perfect' doesn't feel worth a whole lot when I couldn't even grab your hand fast enough so this didn't happen to you."

Bucky doesn’t seem to know what to say. It's not like they've really talked since... since Steve can't remember, and some things are still too hard for Bucky to know how to respond to. He just sits quiet nowadays when that happens instead of lashing out in anger like he did at first, which Steve supposes is an improvement even if he can't read him. 

He hands Bucky his soda to try another sip and changes the subject. "You think you're getting headaches because of what they did to you?"

Bucky drinks and scrunches his face in a frown. "What else could it be?"

"You're under a lot of stress." That's the most optimistic explanation. Steve lays a hand on Bucky's good arm. "You gotta take it easy. Maybe not try and do so much for a little while. You've got a lot to work through." He tries too hard, Steve thinks, helping the team whenever he can be useful, tracking down HYDRA agents, going to Sam's meetings, walking through Brooklyn over and over, pushing himself to remember...

If Bucky were in a better mood, he would say _look who's talking?_ But the corner of Bucky's mouth quirks up half-heartedly and he mutters with a shadow of sarasm. "Thanks."

Steve gives him a half smile and tosses one of the throw pillows out of the way. "You wanna lie down?"

He doesn't get a yes or a no, Bucky just... complies in that stomach-turning way he still does sometimes, but he stretches his legs over Steve's lap and rests his head on the arm of the couch and Steve thinks maybe physical contact outside of a fight is beginning to feel a little more natural to Bucky now.

Bucky's quiet for a long time, and Steve's content to let him lie there and fall asleep if he can, but his eyes open and fix on Steve even though he can see it hurts to focus. Bucky's whole face crumples with emotion and he touches a finger to Steve's stomach.

"I shot you," he says, out of nowhere.

Steve bites his lip. They haven't talked about this. Steve's mostly been trying to stay positive, and to forget how awful it had been on the helicarrier, having to hurt someone who clearly wasn't in control of themselves, someone who had been hurt enough for ten lifetimes. And Bucky's had too much to deal with to stop and focus on any single detail. But now that he's gaining the capacity to process it all, Steve can see that one horrified realization after another will be the next way he'll have to watch him suffer.

"That wasn't your fault, Buck," he says as gently as he can. "HYDRA went a long way to make sure you didn't know what the hell you were doing. It could have just as easily been me they found and turned into their weapon."

It's the truth. Steve wouldn't put it past the SHIELD at the time he was found to make Bucky their new Captain America if their circumstances had been reversed.

"But I shot you." Bucky hasn't taken his eyes from where the bullet had gone in him. The last one, the one meant to do him in after the other two had slowed him down and weakened him. 

Or maybe not. Bucky Barnes kills with a quick shot to the head. He can do it at two hundred meters. He looks like the memory is killing _him_ now though.

"Bucky, if it weren't for you both of us wouldn't be here right now. You haven't tried to hurt me since you got away from HYDRA, so let's just leave the blame with them where it belongs. Come on. You're gonna make your head hurt more."

He knows guilt though. Steve knows the small part of him that feels like he deserves those bullets for letting Bucky fall, and he knows nothing he can say can convince Bucky it isn't his fault. He just wants Bucky to know he doesn't blame him.

Bucky takes his hand away, and he's quiet for another few minutes. Then he wets his lips and says, as if he's been carefully putting the words together, "You think you failed because you didn't catch me in time, but I kept seeing this flash of you reaching out to me and trying. I didn't know what it meant or who you were, but I think I kept seeing it because part of me remembered that someone tried to stop it all from happening to me, I think that's when I started to get too difficult to handle, because I started to remember I didn't belong there." 

His eyes are wet and Steve can see how hard it is for him to talk about it, but it's good for him to talk. It feels good to talk.

Bucky blinks the wetness away and whimpers in the effort. Steve lays a hand on his chest.

"Just take it easy. We don't have to do this right now." 

Bucky runs his tongue over his lips again, face scrunched, water on his lashes. "I'm just fucking tired of being in pain. It's half of what I remember."

There's a lump in Steve's throat. He's read the files. He knows what they did, and now they've found yet another way to hurt him in the aftermath. 

He'll text Bruce as soon as he can. There has to be some way of inventing some pain medication Bucky can metabolize. Or at least a sedative. 

"I know, Buck." Steve pats his chest. "I used to feel that way about being sick all the time."

Bucky nods to say he remembers—a little—and then his eyes go distant. "Every time we walk down to the donut shop on Sunday and I hear someone running a power tool in their garage, all I feel is Zola's saw going through my arm and I wanna run."

Steve freezes. He doesn't know whether to throw up or cry. "Buck, please don't tell me you were awake when-" He can't finish. All he wants at that momen is to put every remaining member of HYDRA in the ground.

Bucky looks away. "They didn't care if I felt it or not." His voice is raspy now. He doesn't usually talk this much. "See why I couldn't forget the person who tried to stop it all? Until they made me."

That doesn't make Steve feel any better, and he's _definitely_ finding a way to get him some pain medication. He's not letting Bucky suffer again. 

"You know what I wish? I wish I'd never asked you to go back out there and fight with me. You'd been through enough. You shoulda gone home, gotten married, had a good life." 

Bucky shakes his head. "Wouldn't have happened, Steve. Once they got you, they got you for the whole war. They wouldn't have sent me home. It was either go with you or go back to the infantry and die with my head blown off in the mud. My country left me for dead back in Austria, along with the rest of us, but you didn't. Which did you think I was gonna pick? You and me don't abandon each other."

Steve felt like he had though. He should have looked for him. He should have... He should do what Peggy said and try and _respect_ what Bucky is telling him. Bucky had every right to choose what he wanted to fight for. Everyone has that right, even people like Rumlow. 

"I guess I never thought about it like that. I just wish things turned out different."

"Yeah." It's quiet, and heavy with everything over the past seventy years Bucky is struggled through. Because he's never going to say it's all right and it was all worth it. Steve doesn't want him to. The people HYDRA forced him to kill don't deserve that.

Steve takes the half-melted ice off Bucky's head and puts it aside on the coffee table. Bucky falls silent, talked out, and Steve touches the heating pad on Bucky's neck. It's gone cold. 

"You want me to warm that up for you again?"

Bucky smiles weakly. "Nah. I don't wanna move. I'm comfortable."

It feels like a victory and Steve can't stop the grin spreading over his face that he's making Bucky just a little bit happy just sitting here. He wants to make him happy, the Bucky he is now. He wants to teach him what that means.

"I heard a hot shower could help." Steve straightens the compress around Bucky's neck. His knuckles brush skin and Bucky's eyes flick to his. The innocent touch feels too intimate and Steve's face heats with what he just said. "I mean you could... I wasn't trying..."

To his surprise, the edge of Bucky's mouth curves up, amused at his faltering. "Not tonight, doll," he says dryly. "I got a headache."

Steve's smile hurts his face, even as his cheeks get hotter thinking about how the two of them used to- He knows Bucky remembers that part. It's in his eyes now.

It's enough for the moment. It's not forever lost to a life there's no returning to or in all that HYDRA hollowed out. It's something for a someday now.

Steve fixes the compress, wipes some of the wetness the ice left on Bucky's forehead, and feels lighter inside now that they really can talk and it feels like Bucky's really there.

*

They manage a few hours of sleep. It's the sun pouring in through the window that wakes Bucky. He blinks, gauging his surroundings like he always does now, and when he sees there's nothing to be afraid of and stretches in Steve's lap, Steve shifts uncomfortably and smiles sheepishly at him.

"You wanna let me up, Buck? I've had to pee for the past forty-five minutes."

He didn't want to wake him, not when Bucky looked peaceful for once. Not when Steve had the warmth of him back for the first time since '43.

Bucky sits up, rubbing his forehead. They're soldiers, wide awake just like that. "Gonna try that shower now anyway."

He's in there a long time. Steve starts to worry that he's passed out or something, but eventually he comes out. Steve is in the living room, dumping the soda and the melted ice from last night, when he turns to see Bucky standing in the hallway.

He's wearing sweatpants and nothing else. No shirt for once.

Steve doesn't want to stare, but he comes closer. His throat goes dry with how muscular Bucky is now—the definition of his abs, the swell of his pecs, his arms—but that's not what he's supposed to be looking at. 

There's a pink mess of scarring webbing out on the left side of Bucky's chest from under where the metal attaches to his shoulder. It's stark and raised against Bucky's smooth, warm-toned skin and a lump rises in Steve's throat. It's one thing to read the medical notes in those files, but another to see the damage that fall did with his own eyes. 

He lifts a hand. "Can I...?" 

Bucky nods and Steve runs his fingertips over the gnarled tissue. He can't imagine what it must be like to live with that kind of reminder every time Bucky changes his clothes or takes a shower. Hearing Bucky scream in his nightmares is bad enough for Steve. 

"Does any of this hurt?"

Bucky shakes his head, standing still while Steve touches. Thankful for that at least, Steve lets his hand fall, not wanting to push it. 

"How 'bout your head?"

"It's just sore from hurting now."

That's another relief. "I talked to Bruce a few minutes ago. He's not a doctor, but he thinks it's just migraines. He'll run some tests if you want, and Thor says they've got some herb on Asgard that can help."

Bucky takes that in, and then says, in that way where his conversations don't have any real flow sometimes, "Thanks for staying up with me."

Steve smiles and holds out his arms. "Hey come here."

Bucky does, hesitantly, not knowing what to expect. Steve pulls him into a hug, wrapping him close in his arms for the first time in seventy years and really feeling him, the warmth of his body, his heart beating, the push of his breathing. Up until now all he's had since Bucky came back is that horrible memory of his body wrapped around Bucky's on the helicarrier, seizing advantage of his one opening when Bucky turned his back, getting him where he had no leverage, squeezing the air out of him until he was panicked and weak.

Blinking that memory away, Steve slides a hand down his back, letting his arm settle around Bucky's waist. "There's something I want you to know, Buck," he says against his stubbly cheek. "Something I never got to say."

Bucky's arms fold awkwardly around Steve's back, but he's leaning on him, into him. "What's that?"

Steve pulls back, gently curling a hand around the back of Bucky's neck, looking into his slightly confused eyes. "I love you," he says. It's something Steve thought they never had to say to each other, but now he knows that's never true.

Bucky's lips press together in a way that puffs his cheeks out. It would be cute, if it weren't obvious he doesn't know how to respond. Love might be too much for him just yet. 

But he tries, just like he's been trying ever since he broke though what HYDRA did to him. "I trust you," he says quietly in resposne, looking expectantly back at Steve for a reaction.

It's like the sun is shining on his heart directly, Steve's chest goes so warm. He knows exactly what it means for Bucky to say that now and he hasn't smiled this hard since he can remember.

He lays a hand on Bucky's shoulder. "Do you trust me enough to pick out somewhere good to take you for breakfast? Bruce said a little walking might help."

Bucky nods and goes to finish getting dressed. They're walking the two and a half blocks to a fancy crepe place ten minutes later and Steve hopes crepes count as extra special pancakes. Bucky watches a pair of men holding hands and slips his hand in Steve's. He looks proud to have initiated something normal people do. 

Steve squeezes his hand and he's so happy he almost hopes someone recognizes him just so he can tell the first person who dares to ask how much he's always loved Bucky.


End file.
